Very dark and moody, I was spooked at times. RuNyx is so good at setting a gothic horror dark forest and abandoned lakes environment. I am a big scaredy cat so my hands were clenched through a majority of the book. (Please don’t go a walk alone in the woods in the middle of a windy night with your freaking candlestick—get back in your room, Corvina!!!!)

(although in hindsight the woods seem safer than your room.

The voices come in at perfect times, too!

We get just enough to make me question back-and-forth whether it’s real (and the castle) or not (Corvina). But not too much that it takes away from Corvina and Vad’s story. 

The relationship does move just a little fast into the “you are my destiny”-type of depth. But it’s very romantic if you are wanting the Romance-book side of Romantasy. The sexual content is also well-written. The writing is definitely more modern than “truly dark academia” and there are some times that an editor might have rearranged a sentence or word choices to flow better. But if you are okay with that, the story reads well and didn’t distract me too much. We are here for the interesting plot, peculiar handling of voices, and vibes. 

Fair warning if you have no tolerance for it: there are the times where Corvina describes herself and goes a little into “pick-me” territory with her wardrobe, lipstick, and mentioning her nose and ear piercings. It was also awkward to randomly bring up her breasts in this manner. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  These instances were a turn-off for me because they don’t really add anything to the story or plot. The most important thing really is her  eye color, so unless the size of her heaving bosom or nose piercing and choker necklaces is an easter egg, it wasn’t necessary. 

Sample quote that I kind of bark-laughed/cringed:

“You might be a luring siren but I’m no ordinary sailor. I’m a mad pirate and I’m trying to resist your call. If I land on your shores, I will plunder and take away everything worth having. Be very careful giving me those eyes.””

This was almost when they just met to give you a sense of speed in the relationship. 

I like that most of the story with Verenmore is wrapped up but I am really curious about the main problem of our FMC here—

who is Mo!?

The bonus scene from Vad’s POV is a great way to lead us into the yet unannounced and unconfirmed next book. Though I now know that I’ll probably want to read the rest of the series during the day! 

So I do realize I got exactly what I expected when I read this book and yet I’m still disappointed. This is the most lukewarm, shallow, uninspired book. To start our main character is the pinnacle of damsel in distress and both her and the MMC are incredibly flat static characters. Not to mention Corvina has the most mild unrealistic case of schizophrenia I’ve ever heard of. While I do realize this book is by no means trying to be a psychological look into the mind of a schizophrenic girl, I do wish if that’s going to be a plot point it was handled with a little more care. (Aka do you research into what schizophrenia is before slapping the name Mo on a lone voice in her head and calling it a day). Regardless of Corvina, don’t even get me started of Vad (crazy that his name is Vad). I still do not understand why he’s into Corvina, aside that some old lady when he was a kid told him he would be. There is nothing driving his motivations outside of pure sexual lust it seems and frankly I find that boring and an ick. ALSO, this was a minor plot point but it really bothered me that the stereotypical mean girl was described that she was a bitch because she was sexually assaulted in her past??? I could unpack why that’s problematic but I think it’s obvious enough. The mystery plot felt like a slap dash after thought and I was unconvinced by any of the plot twists. The world building was weak, the characters were flat, and the plot was like a piece of Swiss cheese. But like I said, I wasn’t really expecting anything more.

So bad that it wasn’t even almost good. Worst book I’ve ever read. The plot gets lost and questions don’t get answered. How are there people giving this 5 stars?

People jumping from roofs, schizophrenic , voices in head , ghosts